[Blog]
>> Vista for lawyers
A few days ago Dan Shearer (a Linux Australia member now living in Scotland) told me about a talk he did for the Scottish Society for Computers about the implications of Vista licencing. The handout for his talk included some very interesting points so I asked him to put it online for reference. Definitely worth a look if you're in a position of advising clients on issues relating to upgrades to Vista: there's some nice ammunition in there to support switching to an alternative instead. The crunch point is basically that for companies with contracts such as non-disclosure agreements already in place it may actually be a direct breach of those agreements to consent to the Vista licencing terms. http://shearer.org/VistaForLawyers
>> Post LCA recovery
LCA totally zonked me out this year. It was a fantastic conf and I had a lot of fun, but so much happens in such a short space of time that it really saps the energy out of you. And since it's such a great opportunity to actually talk face-to-face with people who normally only exist at the other end of an email that I ended up going to bed pretty late most nights.
This year I very deliberately didn't check email for the entire time I was away so firing up Evo after I got back was a bit of a shock too. It took me about 3 days to work through the most immediate backlog of messages but I'm just about caught up now. Only a couple of hundred left unread, which is pretty good for me!
>> Speakers for Debian Miniconf 6?
Just before LCA2005 I had a nightmare. In the nightmare I got up at the start of the Debian Miniconf, thanked everybody for coming, and then realised I'd forgotten to arrange any speakers. 100 expectant faces, 2 days with a totally empty program, and wanting the floor to swallow me up. I've managed to avoid that fate for every Debian Miniconf so far, but with Miniconf 6 just a couple of days away I still have big holes in the second day of the program. I've asked, begged, cajoled, and threatened, but it looks like I may have to do about 4 hours of talks myself. Not that I'm averse to that sort of thing but it'd be more interesting if there was some variety! Actually, I've just realised the problem. Every year previously I've used the standard threat of doing a talk about making truffles and building picket fences if I didn't get enough speakers, but this year I'm actually including a picket fence in my talk in the main conference (really!) so I didn't roll out that threat. Doh! Maybe we should use the spare time for a mini Debcamp? Or just wing it and see if people are inspired at the last minute? The Mini Distro Summit thingie could create a lot of spin-off topics, that's for sure. In any case it'll be a rocking miniconf so come along and see what mystery speakers will be appearing! Of course offers of talks will be read with a great deal of interest ;-)
>> Distro Summit at the Debian Miniconf at LCA
It's been hours and hours since I've done anything stupid in public so it's time for something that could be a bit controversial! The advent of Ubuntu caused a lot of angst in the Debian project and there's still a fair bit of animosity today, at least among some developers. Now there seems to be something of a well-established gulf between Debian and Ubuntu even though their DNA is so much alike. The disconnect between distros with less in common is even bigger: how often do Debian developers interact with Fedora developers, or Gentoo with OpenSuSE, or whatever? People who attended the very first Debian Miniconf in Brisbane in 2002 will probably remember Rusty's brave talk about what Debian can learn from the Red Hat installer - he says he still hasn't been forgiven for that one! Even people of Rusty's stature can't get away unscathed when suggesting that maybe we should broaden our horizons a bit and learn from what the "competition" is doing, and I find that very sad. So I'm going to try something that could work out really well or could turn into a Springeresque chair-throwing session. It's a risk, but I think it's worth it. And the chairs are bolted down. I've put aside the first couple of sessions on day 2 of Debian Miniconf 6 for a mini "Distro Summit" specifically for the purpose of breaking down walls between projects and fostering understanding and collaboration. The first session is going to be for reps from various distros to stand up and give a 5 minute "why my distro is special" talk, giving a quick overview of the different approaches taken by various projects. The second session will then be available for discussion that comes out of those talks, working on ways that distros and projects can improve collaboration instead of treating each other as The Enemy. I'll add more information to the schedule as things develop: miniconf6.debconf.org/schedule Interested in watching the fun? Then just turn up. Like to represent your distro in the discussion? Please drop Pasc and myself an email!
>> Ubuntu Hacks still selling very well
The latest royalty statement for Ubuntu Hacks just arrived from O'Reilly, and the numbers are even better than I expected. Sales are way down compared to the post-launch quarter but they certainly haven't dried up entirely: just a hair under 3000 copies sold in the quarter ended Sep 30 2006! And since it sold out the advance in the first quarter (an impressive result according to Michael Still) that means the royalties are all free and clear at this point.
Not exactly enough to retire on, but a nice bit extra on the side. And it's even nicer when my Mum finds reviews like this!>> Partial sync success on the Nokia E61
Ultimately I want to figure out some way to get my E61 to sync with Evolution (or possibly SiteBuilder) but in the meantime I just want it to sync with *anything* so I've been trying it with every piece of sync software and service I can find. And at last I've had success: GSMSync works like a charm! So now at least I can back up the contacts, calendar and tasks from the phone, and maybe use GSMSync as an intermediate point to then sync to/from other places.
In the meantime GSMSync provides a web interface to their service so at least I can use a browser to manage it from my desktop. Not quite as nice as syncing all the way back to Evo or SB but at least my phone is just a bit less disconnected now.
As part of my quest to get the E61 to talk to me I've spent a bit of time playing around with a SyncML framework but unfortunately the system I'm using only supports syncml+xml, which is what I thought the phone also used until I added some debugging to the SyncML framework and discovered it was actually talking syncml+wbxml. Only 2 letters difference in the name, but a world of difference on the wire. Turns out wbxml is a bandwidth-optimised variant so it's no wonder I haven't had success with other things I've tried, but at least I have a lot more information now and I've found a wbxml library which I'll try patching into the SyncML framework.>> What I did in the holidays, part 3
Built a new bathroom (almost)
I started by ripping out the old bathroom, the toilet, and the laundry, including all the adjoining walls, the ceilings, the old windows, and even the floors, leaving us with a passage with half a wall missing and the only thing stopping people stepping off into the void being a piece of plastic tacked in place.
It was only after the old floorboards were gone that I realised what a bad state the old subfloor was in. The joists were more twisted than a basket of Queensland bananas with vertical variations up to about 17mm so I started by triming down the worst of the high points and then laid a second set of joists alongside the old ones to provide a flat top surface. I also layed thicker sheets than are typically used for domestic flooring so the end result is an extremely strong floor: jumping up and down on it shows no give at all, it's like jumping on a concrete slab.
The photo is actually a bit out of date. There's been a lot of progress since then. The center hole you can see is where the old toilet window used to be, but it's now boxed up as a cupboard and the vanity plumbing is in place directly below it. We had a builder install the windows on the left and right, and you can also see just in from the windows the cabling for a power point (left) and switches (right). The ceiling has now been hung and all the walls have been lined with Villaboard and just need to be tanked so we can start tiling.
For tech geeks though the interesting thing in the picture is the cable to the right of the vanity. Yes, that's Cat-5, and it's everywhere in this place. Everything in the new bathroom is going to be computer controlled or sensed, and I mean *everything*. The window winders will be electric, as will the curtains. Sensors will include ambient light, humidity, temperature, motion, door position, toilet flush, water flow, flowing water temperature, bath water temperature, and anything else I can think of. There won't be a single electrical item cabled in the usual way with a manual switch in line with the device: everything other than basic power points is cabled from a central termination point where it can be computer controlled, and switches themselves are replaced with home-made touch sensitive control surfaces that communicate via Cat-5 back to the automation controller.
Which will run Linux, of course.
I'll be doing a talk at linux.conf.au called Making Things Move: Finding Inappropriate Uses for Scripting Languages which covers some of my home-brew automation / hardware hacking insanity, so if you're interested in this sort of stuff please register for LCA and come along!
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